


Oils

by Moonstruckidiot



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Angst, Coma Will, Hannibal Loves Will, M/M, Post Fall, Post the wrath of the lamb, Sick Will
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-23
Updated: 2017-12-23
Packaged: 2019-02-19 01:22:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,653
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13112928
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Moonstruckidiot/pseuds/Moonstruckidiot
Summary: In has been months since the fall and Will has not woke up, Hannibal expresses his grief through painting Will's portrait hoping it will help him find his way back home.Not a great summary, lolMy radiance fic





	Oils

**Author's Note:**

> My Radiance Fic - thank you to Jamie and Romina for all their hard work in producing this wonderful anthology.
> 
> I think there is a little bit of influence from Dorian Gray and other literary works in this fic :-)

Morning light streams though windows into a white washed room. A breeze carries through a door left ajar but it brings with it no sound from the outside world. The flutter of a long voile curtain is the only sign of life.

The room is bare. No priceless paintings hang on the walls, no sculptures adorn antique cabinets and no bookcases house first editions of long dead authors.

Will Graham sleeps in a bed in the centre of the room. He has slept a long time, long enough for his skin to grow pale and his curls to almost touch his shirt collar, if he was wearing one.

Sat close by is Hannibal Lecter. He is perfectly still, so still in fact he hardly seems to breath. Within arms reach is an easel and on it is propped a canvas. The painting is little more than an initial sketch and a base layer, the oils do not yet hum with the life Hannibal wants to breathe into them.

OoOoO

Since he was a child Hannibal has sketched. Before he had constructed the walls of his memory palace it had been his refuge.

For hours he would sit, hardly moving at all, as he quietly captured an object of interest with his eyes, his mind and his hands. He would delve so deep, it felt like he could understand its mysteries and obtain mastery over it.

For a while, as a young man, he had dabbled in oils. Each layer of paint felt like the process of creation, of expressing his own nature, of being alive.  But when the colour of life began to run through Hannibal’s fingers the painting stopped, he feared he would reveal too much of himself.

So he returned to his first love. 

Sketchbooks and pencils, being so much easier to carry, accompanied him across Europe and then to America.

Hannibal has sketched Will Graham many times. The leather bound sketchbooks left behind in Baltimore reveal the full extent of his obsession. His fixation on small details, Will’s hand suspended in air as it reached out to touch or the slow sensual glide of his Adams apple as he swallowed. Captured also in graphite are glimpses, some bloody and some melancholy, of what lay beneath the chrysalis of Will’s becoming.  

In the silence of this whitewashed room, the vibrancy and purity of oils seem to Hannibal to be the only way of revealing the radiance of his muse.

OoOoO

Hannibal could easily sit and watch Will all day...all the days of his life... until dust and cobwebs take them. It is, to him, both a comforting and unsettling feeling to know his life is irrevocably connected to the fate of just one man.  

_Where are you now_ , he wonders. The thought is a constant presence as are the questions it brings.

With an exhale of breath he pushes himself up from the chair, he will not give in to hopelessness it is the enemy.  He walks towards the bed and allows his fingers to slide through curls. Will’s hair always enticed him. The style was not quite as changeable as the weather but over the years its length had been a barometer. A sign of Will’s agency in the world, or at least how he wanted other people to perceive his stability, his control and his capacity to wage war. Now every strand of hair is precious to Hannibal, he cannot help but think it contains Will’s essence. He does trim it and calm it but he’ll never cut it.  

He plays with loose curls as he watches the steady rise and fall of Will’s chest. There are so many questions and he knows they will be left unanswered.

_Are you lost in an endless fight with the dragon. Do you stand on the edge of the cliff and redesign our fates. Do you share the marital bed with Molly or perhaps you walk hand in hand with Alana, your kiss becoming something more than a clutch for balance._

_Have you returned to your childhood and eradicated me entirely_. No, thinks Hannibal, unable to truly countenance such a possibility he readily dismisses the thought. _You would not seek to be so small, so defenceless again._

_I’d like to think you search for me in the ruins of Troy_. He laughs at his own pomposity, a sad laugh it catches in his throat. Whatever dreams light up in Will’s brain they are unknown and unknowable to him.

Some where far off he hears his name called. He stills for a moment, attunes his mind but the memory is gone.

_Do you even remember who you are_? It makes his heart heavy to think those words.

‘Blood and breath,’ he utters to the room. His thoughts are drawn from the bright white room into the dark, to the sound of two hearts beating and water breaking some distance below.

When Hannibal had imagined them together it had never been like this, so silent. Before Will he had been used to silence, it surrounded him but he hardly even noticed. Even now it is not a heavy burden to bear but it is a regret he can’t shake.

On the cliff everything had felt so noisy and so quiet at the same time. The loudness of pain, of breath, of hearts, dimmed by the feel of Will so full of life in his arms.

_It really does look black in the moonlight._ Hannibal smiles in remembrance. Those words full of wonder had marked an epiphany, an opening up to a new world. Black did became Will. It didn’t hide him but, as with the stars in the night sky, it set him off all the more.

OoOo0

Hannibal picks up Will’s hand, the one that had ripped through Dolarhyde’s all too human flesh, and brings it to his lips. The kiss lingers but Hannibal knows, logically at least, it does not have the power to wake his sleeping beauty.

_Did you shatter? Even now are you piecing yourself back together?_

_What will you become?_

Returning to the easel Hannibal picks up his palette. _I could never predict you but perhaps the oils can._

He builds the background first, shadows and secrets cling to the corners and hide behind trees. If you were lost in the wood, could you follow the signs back to the land of the living. Hannibal hopes so, in the layers of paint he places symbols and talismans, he has guided Will on his journey before he will gladly do so again.

For a while Hannibal loses himself in the world he is creating. If it is perfect, if he can reveal the code hidden in all life, perhaps he can weave magic.  

Bristles hover close to the wet paint, he breathes out and lowers his hand allowing the brush to hang loose from his fingers. No matter where his mind wanders it is always drawn back to the white room, to Will and the bed on which he lays.

God, the devil and the deep blue sea have been prayed to, threatened and berated but no one is listening. If it were possible for one mind to wake another through sheer will power then Hannibal and Will would have shared many glasses of wine in the months since the fall. Hannibal has promised, not in words there is no need for those when it is etched so deep in his bones, that he will never give up.   

_Shall I harness lightening to wake you_?

_But I have not stitched you from the souls of the dead, you will never be a monster._

_You will be vicious, haven’t you always been so._

_You will revel in blood and the power it brings and you will be all the more beautiful for it._

_Men will call you demon. You will inhabit their nightmares skin glinting like obsidian, teeth dripping with their blood._

Oils glisten wet and jewel like they beckon Hannibal to breathe life into a figure who is little more than a shade.

Eyes that can pierce souls look out from the painting and into the world.

A mouth capable of such deception and cruelty is poised to speak.

And hands, hands that would take a life in a heartbeat reach out to touch.

_But you,_ thinks Hannibal a fond smile on his face, _my obstinately compassionate boy, you will never be a monster, you will show mercy where I would show none._

In the dark, light finds Will’s face.

Blood does not cling to his lips but a smile, one which meets his eyes.

Fingers hover over the fur of a long haired dog.

Hannibal takes a step back from the easel. He will not spend days manipulating the painting altering the tinniest of details. It’s not what he had in mind when he put down the first layer of paint but the oils have spoke and it is what it needs to be.

Will will find his way home now, Hannibal is sure.

0o0o0

Hannibal walks over to the window slipping it onto the next notch, the room needs more air. It overlooks a garden, only the tops of bushes and sculptures have been visible for months but a thaw set in a little over a week ago and now the ground is damp, the world a little warmer and Hannibal is sure somewhere a bird sings.

“The world begins to wake from its winter slumber,” he says as he turns towards Will.

He makes his way over to the bed. There are a few creases on the sheets that weren’t there before. Leaning across Will he smooths them out and tucks in a loose corner.

“Soon green shoots will push their way through the earth.”

A curl is pushed behind Will’s ear before Hannibal whispers, “Will you return to me before spring, my love.”

 

The End

**Author's Note:**

> I confess I normally don't spend that long on my fics, a few days at the most (and it probably shows, ;-) ) but I wrote this over several weeks and in the end I think it's one of my best. It was just a little idea about Hannibal painting Will's portrait and what he has 'become' but it turned into something a little different which stories often do. 
> 
> I may or may not continue this or at least write about Will waking up - he does wake up but it's early summer - Will never gives Hannibal an easy time now does he :-)


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